P NIRMALA Vs. STATE OF KERALA

JUDGEMENT

(1.) Petitioner s husband was apprehended on the allegation of commission of offences punishable under the provisions of the Abkari Act, hereinafter, the "Act". On that count, lorry belonging to the petitioner was confiscated as per Ext. P1 order. Since her appeal against it was dismissed, the petitioner filed Ext. P3 requesting the Excise Commissioner to invoke the suo motu power of revision under Section 67F of the Act. That request has been declined as per the impugned Ext. P4 order, on the grounds that the Excise Commissioner had already decided not to invoke the suo motu revisional jurisdiction in relation to Ext. P2 order; that a party to an appeal under the Act does not have the right to file a revision; that a party has no right to insist upon the Excise Commissioner to invoke suo motu revisional power and, still further, that the required fee is not paid on the application in terms of Rule 11 of the Kerala Legal Benefit Fund Rules 1991, hereinafter, "LBF Rules" and S.R.O.226 of 2002. This is under challenge.

(2.) Section 67F of the Act provides that the Commissioner, may of his own motion, call for and examine the record of an order passed under Section 67B or 67E of the Act. After calling for the records, he may make such inquiry or cause such inquiry to be made and may pass such orders as he deems fit. The time limit of 30 days is prescribed for exercise of such suo motu revisional power. Section 67E contains the right of appeal, which was invoked by the petitioner. That resulted in Ext. P2. No provision in the Act confers any right on the petitioner to seek revision of that appellate order. In the jurisdictional concept of revision, contrasting it with that of an appeal, it is a well accepted principle that even when a party has a provision enabling him to file a revision, the right to seek revision of a decision is not akin to a right of appeal. Also, a revisional jurisdiction is not always co-existence with appellate jurisdiction. An examination of the Act clearly shows that no party has a right to file a revision against an appellate order passed under Section 67E of the Act. There is also no provision enabling a revision being filed. The only revisional power in relation to a confiscation order under Section 67B or an appellate order under Section 67E is that which is contained in Section 67F. That is essentially and indisputably a suo motu power. While a person may not have the right to seek revision of an order or even when there is no provision enabling him to file a revision, any suo motu power available with any authority can be triggered in a given case at the request of an aggrieved person. In that process, he is not invoking a revisional power or filing a revision.

(3.) He is only making a request to the repository of the suo motu revisional power to invoke and exercise such power and if such a request is found to be appealing, within the format of the relevant statutory provision, it would be open to the revisional authority to invoke the revisional power suo motu and to exercise such authority and do the needful as may be deemed fit in accordance with the mandate of a provision like Section 67F of the Act. The exercise of such power would depend on the authority deciding it a fit case for exercise of revisional power, to prevent miscarriage of justice. So such so, while a party cannot challenge an appellate order under Section 67E he cannot be precluded from requesting the Excise Commissioner to consider a case for exercise of the suo motu power and such application is not an application by way of revision but only one requesting invocation of the revisional power. That application, by itself, is not revision at all. But it may not be in the fitness of justice to exclude the invocation of the suo motu revisional power on a legitimate request of an aggrieved person. It would be exclusively within the domain of the revisional authority to decide whether it would invoke the revisional power suo motu or not.